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Marble Egg
Theodora
Myfatherdoesn’tspeakuntil we’re in the car.
We sit at the back, side by side, and my entire body is tense with anxiety. The partition that separates us from the driver is closed, leaving us isolated in the dull silence of the car. The engine is barely a hum, a low murmur around us, emphasising the silence. Outside the blacked-out windows, the landscape is drained of colours, the blue of the sky dulled to a dim grey.
I sit and stare out of the window, forcing myself not to fidget. My father would notice immediately—he’d take it as a sign of weakness, a sign of inferiority.
“Do you know why I’m sending you to Spearcrest Academy?” he asks.
His voice is deep and harsh. Like me, my father was educated in England, but he still has a thick northern Russian accent from living and working in St Petersburg and Moscow.
I don’t answer. My father doesn’t ask questions he wants answers to. In English class, I learned that the term for this is a rhetorical question.
My father’s questions, like his presence, only ever require silent obedience from me.
“I’m sending you there because I wish you to receive the best education possible. I wish you to be clever, well-spoken, sophisticated. You are my daughter—you bear my name. What the world sees when they look at you is an extension of me. Like my cars or my houses. I buy my cars from the best manufacturers, and I have my houses designed by the best architects. It is the same as sending you to the best school.”
I already know all of this, I want to tell him.I already know I must be the best because you only possess the best.
I couldn’t say so if I wished. I’m sitting stiff and straight, little more than an object at his side.
“Now let me tell you some reasons I do not have for sending you to this school.”
There is a darkness in his voice like the heavy black clouds before thunder splits the sky. He pauses because he is about to arrive at the point he wants to make, and it’s important I pay attention to it.
“I am not sending you to this school so that you may grow up to be a whore.”
He spits the word as if it’s venom in his mouth.
“I am not sending you to this school so that you may sit and preen for the attention of boys and men. You are Theodora Dorokhova—your reputation is mine. I would not have it said that I am a whore anymore than I would have it said that you are one. Do you know what a whore is?”
My voice is so hard and heavy in my throat I can’t even swallow. I curl my fingers around the sleeves of my cardigan, holding on tight, hoping I’m not about to suffocate. There’s a burning in my eyes like I’m going to cry, but I know I can’t allow it to happen.
I’ve already drawn my father’s anger—my tears would only tip him into fury.
I shake my head no.
“A whore is a woman who gives herself to men. There are many ways to be a whore, Theodora, but only one way to be pure. You must never let a man touch you, not in any way, not until you are married. Do you understand?”
This time, I nod. My nod says the things I can’t.
Yes, Papa, I understand.
I must be exactly what you say I must.
It is the only way I might remain safe from your anger.
My father turns his head to look at me. I don’t want to look at him; meeting his gaze is a painful act, like touching fire. But if I don’t, his anger will grow.
So I look up at him; I pray to all the saints in all the cathedrals to help me keep my tears locked away safe and tight inside my chest.
I endure my father’s gaze for as long as he needs me to.
“That boy you were speaking to,” he says. “He might be the son of a nobleman or a billionaire—it does not matter. Like you, he will marry when he comes of age. He will do his duty for his family, for his name. But before this, he might wish to taste freedom, to learn what he likes. Him—and all the boys here. They are all like you, but you are not like them. Men have more freedom in this world—it is not fair, and if you had been lucky enough to be born a boy, you would not have to endure this injustice. If you were born a boy, I would not have needed to speak of this with you. Because boys—men—cannot be ruined in the way women can. Do you understand?”
I nod. I have a vague idea of what my father is saying. He’s spoken of it before—as has my mother.
